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Description

Paint.NET is a free piece of software which was developed on the .NET Framework, for use on Microsoft Windows. The purpose of Paint.NET is to enable the user to edit graphics, much like you can in other editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop.

Features

Paint.NET has many great features, for example, it allows you to apply many different effects to an image. You can apply effects such as ‘oil painting’ and ‘pencil sketch’, or you can blur or distort an image. There is a tool to sharpen images, and a tool for the removal of red eyes, which is very useful. A brilliant feature in Paint.NET is the clone stamp tool, which allows you to retouch a photo by copying one bit of the image onto another part of the image; this is particularly useful if you are trying to achieve smoother looking skin in a photo, or want to get rid of a mark on part of the image.
Since Paint.NET supports plugins, it means you can access even more features, such as image adjustments and effects. There are also more advanced plugins, such as Shape3D, which enables you to turn a 2D drawing into a 3D shape. Paint.NET also has all the features you would expect from a graphic editor program, such as being able to add text, a paintbrush tool and an eraser tool.

Comparison

Paint.NET is a definite rival for other similar programs. The obvious competitor is the standard Paint program which comes automatically installed with Windows, however Paint.NET completely blows this out of the water. The standard Paint is very basic and you are limited to what you can do; create shapes, add text, resize images, etc. Paint.NET however, can do all this and more, eliminating the need for the standard Paint software.
Another piece of similar software is Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop does have some fantastic tools, but it is an expensive piece of software, whereas Paint.NET has many of the same features and is available to download for free. The only downside of Paint.NET is that since it was created for Windows, it doesn’t work on any other operating systems, whereas Adobe Photoshop does.

Conclusion

Overall, it is clear that Paint.Net is an excellent piece of software, which does everything you would expect from a basic graphics editor program, and more! Paint.Net is perfect for almost anyone, whether you just want to adjust the size of an image, or edit a photo in more depth. Definitely recommended.

About Rick Brewster/ WSU

Paint.NET was created by Rick Brewster originally as part of a student project for Washington State University, however it has since become a very beneficial piece of software. It was initially released in 2004, and has been continually updated since its release. It is still being developed with a developer who worked on Paint.NET as a student at Washington State University, and now works at Microsoft. Statistics from May 2006 showed that it had been downloaded over 2 million times from that date, however the figure is likely to have risen significant amounts since then. DotPDN is now the official owner of Paint.NET.